Life. To the Max

Sometimes, when a beloved figure dies, it feels like an offence against humanity; an injury. When Max Walker passed in September to a sinister disease, nature also brought an end to a condition of a different sort, a contagion that Aussies never wanted cured: Max’s infectious happiness and enthusiasm; a smile that never went away. An indomitable, driven optimism.

Max was an achiever without ego. No matter the task – rucking, writing, bowling, broadcasting, hosting – he’d thrust his immense joy against it and not only master it, but somehow change the way it was done. If, back in the 1970s, you read his thoughts about colliding with monstrous ruckmen and bowling to blazing batsmen – the cognitive and attitudinal strategies he used – you were reading what today is called “success thinking”. Unlike many of its theorists, he had the CV to demonstrate his mastery of its application. In other words, he was the only sort of “self-help” person you’d want to listen to. Toward the end of his life, he described his approach this way: “I re-imagined what I might do, over and over again.” Not many average Aussies talk like that, yet average Aussies loved Max. This country has lost someone it needed.

Max was, after all, a modern Renaissance man – and that’s no hollow hyperbole. Not only did he play cricket at the top level, but also elite VFL in one of the game’s toughest jobs, as a ruckman for Melbourne in an era of rucking giants. Spanning both those careers was his architectural study.

Critics and literary snobs have dismissed his numerous books as the efforts of a cheesy Anglo-Aussie ex-cricketer to stay relevant and make some quids, but in fact the “literary genre” that, for the sake of this exercise, we’ll call the Great Aussie Yarn has actually lost one of its very best practitioners. His skill was honed in a traditional hotbed of great exponents: a pub. A pub in Tassie, owned by his father, where impressionable, enthusiastic young Max learned all about stories, their crafting and their embellishment.

There was clever irony in books titled “How to hypnotise chooks”, “How to kiss a crocodile” and “How to puzzle a python.” Not only were the titles themselves a wry dig at self-help books he could trump with achievement, but their rollicking content and sometimes obtuse method concealed a sharp wit.

Yet there was no solipsism about Max. He always found room for people, and on those occasions when his perpetually packed schedule took him away from caring about them, he’d stop, reflect, admit mistakes if he had to, and do something about it. That was a man.

But what of his cricket? It would be an insult to remember Maxie just for his bowling action. We know it’s why his nickname was “Tangles”. He went with the nickname, downplayed his own achievement and ability and seemed happy for posterity to pronounce him a faithful subordinate.

He bowled uphill and into the wind more than just about anyone, and so was seen by many as a draught horse, but as a first-change bowler, he was up there with Johnson and Voce. Max only became one of cricket’s great first-change bowlers after a couple of seasons of taking the lead, following Lillee’s back injury and prior to Jeff Thomson’s explosive arrival. During that crucial time for Australian cricket, he was the lifeblood of the attack and destroyed three national teams, two in their own conditions. Then, after the violent burst of the 1974-75 tour, he again stepped in during the sixth Test when the twin terrors were out, and took 8/143. Max was, at his best, a lethal bowler of cut and swing, whom many of the world’s very best batsmen found extremely challenging to face. There are plenty of images of him trapping Greenidge, enticing Richards’ edge, sending Grieg’s castle cartwheeling, blasting Abbas and many others to suggest he was nothing but absolute top-shelf.

Yet he was content to come across as an accidental hero, a second-stringer, an also-ran in an era of great cricketers. He was, in fact, one of those great cricketers.

Sydney, January 1973, was the first instance in international cricket of anyone bowling reverse swing. On the day of Max’s death, Greg Chappell recalled the incredible conjuring trick Maxie performed not long after that Test, in the West Indies, when he took over opening duties after Lillee and Massie were injured. The pitches were graveyards, yet Max got it to bend, and the deader the ball, the more it swung. He revealed his secret to teammates, and the phenomenon passed without comment until Akram and Younis employed it in the late 1980s.

Max ended up averaging 27 with the ball after 34 tests, but his average was knocked about in his last series – the infamous 1977 Ashes, when the pre-WSC funk descended on the tourists. They were swimming through molasses. No Aussie had a great series. Max averaged almost 40 for his 14 wickets.

Max was happy with whatever verdict history passed down. He was happy not to apportion fault. Little about life seemed to get him down in any way. I can’t recall him uttering a negative word, or anything judgemental. Yet he was a man who actually expressed himself, eloquent in his way and naturally amusing. You’d be smiling before he even spoke. How we took that for granted.

Try to think of any public figure who has brought more joy to this country. Max was just a big, well-rounded blend, but his net effect was joy. He was able to fill pubs and clubs at sportsmen’s nights and fundraisers just because of who he was – not his sporting achievement, not his books, his architecture, his TV celebrity. Just because he was the whole, happy package.

An intelligent man, Max was the sort of bloke whose company everyone enjoyed. As an architect, he appealed to professionals. He was a man of all the people, not just “the plebs”.

His capacity for bowling all day was legendary. But just as astounding was his stamina for seeing the “lighter side” of just about every situation. Try it. Most of us would have to spend a lifetime overhauling our entire character to even get close.

Maxwell Henry Norman Walker, you big, cuddly national hero, we will miss you. To Australians at least, your perennial smile is as iconic as Jagger’s lips, Churchill’s stogie or Edna’s gladioli. We can only hope death is what they say it is – just a short breather between eternities – because then we can be justified saying a cheesy “avagooweegend, Mr Walker”, and meaning it. We’ll hear you before we see you no doubt, flailing, perhaps wrong-footedly, through the door on eternity’s Monday.

Published in Inside Cricket, November 2016